1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a paper bill depositing/dispensing apparatus, and more particularly, to a paper bill depositing/dispensing apparatus that can collectively dispense bills of different sizes by accumulating them as a steady bundle when dispensing the bills with one simple and compact mechanism that can execute a deposit process and a dispensing process in an ATM (Automated Teller Machine) or the like.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, an apparatus that feeds bills to a conveyance path with a feeding mechanism from a stacker or a cassette for accumulating a predetermined number of bills according to each denomination, accumulates, from the conveyance path, bills in a temporarily accumulating unit of a predetermined size suitable for a bill of a maximum size, and collectively passes the bills to a customer is proposed by Japanese Laid-open Patent Publication No. 2000-99795 as an apparatus for collectively dispensing bills of different sizes, such as Euro bills or the like, as a bundle of the bills according to a face value.
According to Japanese Laid-open Patent Publication No. 2000-99795, bills are fed in order according to each denomination and accumulated in the temporarily accumulating unit when the bills are dispensed as described above. In the temporarily accumulating unit, a paper bill accumulation mechanism composed of a stack roller, a backup roller and a brush roller is arranged.
A rear end of each bill fed by the stack roller and the backup roller into the temporarily accumulating unit is beaten by paddles of the brush roller so that the bill is accumulated without colliding with a succeeding bill.
Additionally, with the technique recited in Japanese Laid-open Patent Publication No. 2000-99795, when bills are deposited, a bundle of the bills that are deposited and stored in the temporarily accumulating unit is separated one by one with a separation mechanism that is arranged at a position away from the paper accumulation mechanism and composed of a feed roller and a gate roller, and fed to a conveyance path that connects to a storing unit with a pinch roller, a feed roller, a driving roller and the like.
Furthermore, for such an apparatus, also a function of automatically removing a bill if a customer accidentally leaves the bill and of shifting to the next transactional state is important. Normally, a bill is automatically fed from the temporarily accumulating unit to the conveyance path and moved from the conveyance path to a left bill storing unit in a similar manner as in the case of depositing a bill.
Incidentally, the temporarily accumulating unit that also serves as an insertion/withdrawal slot recited in Japanese Laid-open Patent Publication No. 2000-99795 is independently provided with a separation mechanism and a conveyance mechanism, which are dedicated to a bill insertion. Accordingly, this technique has a problem that the configuration of the temporarily accumulating unit is extremely complicated and the apparatus is increased in size by the mechanism portion.
Additionally, for example, to store bills of different sizes, such as Euro bills, according to a face value in the temporarily accumulating unit, the bills are normally accumulated in a way such that the rear end of each bill to be accumulated is beaten by paddles of the brush roller as recited in Japanese Laid-open Patent Publication No. 2000-99795.
However, if the paddles of the brush rollers are too short, they cannot sufficiently press a bill. In contrast, if the paddles are too long, a bill having low stiffness can be possibly wound, leading to an occurrence of jamming. Therefore, this technique has an yet-to-be-solved problem of having limitation on a size of an available bill when steadily accumulating bills.